VAUXHALL is brushing up its image. Firstly, its cars look rather good. Evidence: the Astra GTC.

Secondly, it’s having a pop at the cool market, currently occupied by the Mini, Fiat 500 and Citroen DS3, with its ADAM and, thirdly, it’s bringing upmarket motors like the Cascada four-seat convertible into the family.

Hot on its heels is a new model that Vauxhall is presumably hoping will lift the griffin badge still further away from the image of sales reps in Cavaliers chomping away on greasy sarnies in motorway service areas.

This new weapon is the Insignia Country Tourer. Now here’s a posh-sounding name that’s right out of Country Life magazine and the green welly world of toffs and shotguns.

So what is it?

Essentially an estate car that can cope with some mild off-roading. It’s a rival to Audi’s A6 Allroad and Volvo’s XC70.

Like both of those, the Vauxhall has a proper 4x4 drivetrain sitting under its floor.

The Country Tourer uses the latest Haldex system (the brand that VW uses) to transmit and control torque to the front and rear axles.

Most of the time the car drives along with just the front wheels doing the work (for economy) but as soon as the brain detects any slippage, power is sent to the other axle. Vauxhall is going to show off the new car at the Frankfurt motor show in September with sales starting later in the year.

Three engines will be available: two diesels and one petrol and none is short on grunt.

The entry-level diesel is a 2.0-litre unit with 161bhp; the next one is the same size but with two turbos and 195bhp; and the petrol motor is the same capacity and again turbo-charged for 247bhp.

The diesels come with either a six-speed gearbox or automatic transmission and the petrol engine only with the auto.You’ll be able to spot a Country Tourer coming towards you thanks to its wider, deeper front grille.

At the bottom of the grille is a sliver of silver that gives away the?presence of a bash plate under the engine.

To give the car modest off-road ability, the ride height has been raised 20mm over the standard Insignia estate.

Vauxhall hasn’t revealed prices but I’d guess the entry-level version will sneak in at under £30,000.

IRONIC this. Ferrari has emailed telling us that to stop ­unnecessary emails floating around the firm and wasting people’s time, its staff aren’t allowed to send an email to more than three people at a time. Why do we need to know this? A good example of a waste-of-time email.

NISSAN’S GT Academy is kicking off this week.

The culmination of a worldwide online Gran Turismo 6 contest is a race camp at Silverstone. A couple of previous winners are now racing professionally so it does do what it says on the tin.

POP the world famous Beaulieu Autojumble into a diary for September 7-8.

This vast get-together is in its 47th year and will feature around 2000 sales stands flogging loads of stuff, from a piece that you ­desperately needed for your 1932 Austin Seven special, to bits that you didn’t really need at all but really quite fancied.

A SUMMER-LONG 0 per cent interest deal is running on a variety of Skodas, including the Citigo.

You can put a Citigo SE 1.0 on your drive from as little as £69 a month, a bit of a bargain.

The new Octavia is also included in Skoda’s latest promotion, with lease payments from £149 a month.

THANKS to changes to the pound/yen exchange rate, Subaru has cut the price of every model in its XV range by £2300.

The 2.0D S starts at £21,995 and tops out at £27,925 for the 2.0i SE Lux Premium auto.

The XV was Switzerland’s best selling car in August last year. I doubt UK sales are as good because Subaru would have taken the exchange cut as extra profit – I don’t see other Japanese firms cutting their prices.

VOLVO is introducing some its new safety systems on the XC90, which will be out at the end of next year.

It’s clever stuff from the company that was first to fit seat belts in its cars (long before they were compulsory).

The first gizmo is pedestrian detection that works in the dark and also spots cyclists.

The second is road edge detection with steer assist, which steers the car towards the middle of the road. Finally, there’s adaptive cruise control.

Nothing new here, apart from the steer assist feature that helps the driver by ­automatically following the car in front.

It’s all part of Vision 2020, Volvo’s campaign to see that no one will be killed or seriously injured in a one of its new cars by that year.